Wide Eyes Technologies participates in IJCAI 2017

Arnau Ramisa, Senior Computer Vision Researcher at Wide Eyes Technologies, the stellar speaker at Early Career Spotlight at IJCAI 2017

Last August, Melbourne became the world’s epicenter of artificial intelligence. Investigators, experts and the sector’s leaders met in the Australian capital at the IJCAI17, the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. This main international gathering of researchers in AI Technology is one that Wide Eyes Technologies didn’t want to miss.

The Senior Computer Vision Researcher at Wide Eyes Technologies, Arnau Ramisa, has travelled to Australia because he was selected as one of the stellar speakers on the special track called “Early Career Spotlight” talks. A track where active individuals and known researchers in AI from all over the world are called to share the principle ideas of their research.

Stellar speakers on the special track “Early Career Spotlight” at IJCAI 2017

Arnau Ramisa’s research presented during the IJCAI17 explores several multimodal tasks in the domain of news articles. For example, article illustration or caption generation, which we found to be significantly more challenging than their equivalents in traditional datasets. Due to the loose relationship between the different data modalities, he believes news article data is an excellent benchmark to foster the development of powerful learning models.

Since its inception in 1969, IJCAI took great pride in representing all aspects of AI research. Even now, with a myriad specialized conferences, IJCAI remains uniquely suited to give the attendees an integrated snapshot of the whole of AI enterprise. Notwithstanding the aim of this world summit about AI, the 26th edition will go down in history for the acclaimed open letter to the United Nations signed by Elon Musk and another 116 leaders.

Threats and benefits, the AI debate we need to have according Elon Musk

The benefits and implications regarding the use of artificial intelligence has divided the experts. At the end of July, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg crossed swords in public, demonstrating their opposed positions. Zuckerberg used one of his stories on Facebook to reproach Elon Musk’s catastrophic attitude, Musk’s answer appeared on Twitter. The Tesla and SpaceX founder is concerned that the lack of control within artificial intelligence may become something dangerous.

IJCAI17 marked by the claim of Elon Musk and other 116 leaders

A few days ago, during the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence that took place in Melbourne, the Silicon Valley tycoon once again warned the world about the potential dangers of this new technology because of the possible unethical uses, and pushed for regulating the use of AI.

Specifically, Musk and another 116 leaders in robotics and AI published an open letter addressed to the United Nations to warn about the danger of autonomous weapons powered by AI with the aim of prohibiting its international use, during the biggest conference about AI. The letter explains why we should all be worried about the use of these kinds of elements, because the swift progress of these technologies make the use of autonomous weapons and vehicles a real danger in a matter of years.